Thousands of people every day go looking for a home based business that works and can free them financially from their pay check to pay check lifestyle. The unfortunate truth is that thousands of those thousands get burned. They sink their money into something that sounded great, but turns out to be something different. Or they were promised great support, and there ended up being none. How could this happen? Is it even possible to find a home based business that works anymore? Thankfully, the answer is yes. It’s very possible – provided you know that to look for. This article is designed to help the reader understand some critical things to watch out for if a person is looking to find a home based business that works. Learn to side step these hurdles and you can find the financial freedom you deserve.

Beware – Big Money Promises – the growth of this industry has led people to make more and more outrageous promises about the amount of money that can be earned. Yes, you can find a home based business that works, and can pay you extremely well. But we hear more and more stories of people who made hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars in 24-48 hours (I personally know people who have done this). Naturally, we get excited by the thought. Wow, imagine! But the truth is that these people have spent several years building a list of hundreds of thousands of people in their industry, and then made a single offering that brought them that pay day. Overnight successes they are not. Creating a great income is certainly possible, but beware of grossly inflated numbers.
Beware – Get Rich Quick Promises – Again, some internet marketers are advertising $1,000′s in your first week, and quick and easy pay days. But let’s be realistic here. Yes, the potential of the internet is amazing. But this is still a business. If you’re serious about creating a home based business that works and is sustainable, it will likely take more than a week to begin earning thousands of dollars a day. Again, the income potential is virtually limitless, which is one of the motivating factors behind finding a home based business that works. The determining factors will always be your drive, passion, and the actions you take. But having realistic expectations will help keep you from getting disappointed and discouraged.
Beware – Compensation Plans That Create the Illusion of Support – Many companies use compensation plans that give the illusion of support. They have your sponsor help you with your first two sales (for which they collect the entire commission) and then leave you to fend for yourself, since they will no longer benefit from your being successful. This provides the illusion of support early on, but doesn’t create a dynamic team atmosphere, where new member and sponsor are mutually interested in your success. The best companies have compensation plans that create win-win, mutually profitable scenarios that help new people create quick and lasting success.
Beware – Alarm Bells in Your Gut – Above all else, when you’re trying to find a home based business that works for you, you have to trust your intuition. If something just doesn’t seem right, it probably isn’t. Go with your gut.
Now it’s up to you. In your quest to find a home based business that works for you, will you be taken by slick sales people and their lofty promises? Or will you connect to something legitimate (probably also with amazing potential, but they don’t need to blow it out of proportion), a real home based business that works. Creating time and financial freedom for you and your family is more possible than most people realize. Be aware of these 4 critical factors to find a home based business that works for you. You deserve to be free.

One of the keys to succeeding in information product creation is to break the process up into discrete steps. This frequently isn’t an instinctive reaction for the typical information marketer. Especially on the internet where small sized learning products are the norm.

However, it is extremely important to your ultimate success. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you don’t do this you probably won’t succeed… even when you are starting out let alone as you move forward.

Your product creation system should do this for you if only to help you to understand the overall task.

But why?

In this article, I’m going to ignore chunking and focus on the practical aspects. That’s not to say that chunking isn’t important. It is. It’s important to understanding and to learning the process. But while you can use the same chunks as you move forward, long term your focus needs to be on the operation of the system not the understanding of it. Unless of course you are constantly training new people!

So why is chunking important to long term use of the product creation process? (Yes, I know systems design uses a different term for this process but I’m not teaching you systems design. So I’m going to use the word learning content designers use.)

The first reason that having individual discrete tasks is important is one of schedule estimation. Frequently it is very difficult to estimate how long the total task of creating a product will take. After all, the size and type of the products matters as does the number of products in your product funnel. And those are just the most obvious elements. However, estimating a discrete task is often much easier. The total can then be estimated as the total of the discrete tasks.

Secondly, scheduling a large task can be problematic. However, by segmenting the task into a number of discrete tasks, you gain a much greater flexibility in scheduling. Not only that but as your business begins to add people you are able to schedule multiple people to the product creation.

Finally, segmenting a large task into smaller discrete tasks allows you to have much better control over the product creation. This affects two different areas — status and quality.

By segmenting your process into discrete tasks you are able to schedule and record the progress at much more detailed level. As a result you are more in control of the status of the product creation. You know what everyone is doing. When they should complete it. And how much it should cost. You also know exactly what has been done.

You also improve your overall quality. Instead of waiting until everything is done you can check quality as you go. This allows you to immediate react to low quality products without absorbing their costs. This means that you have less rework and your rework costs less. And if the product is not going to meet its quality requirement you will know about it in time to stop the development, change the requirement or fix the product.

If you tried to think of people involved in product creation, who would come to mind? You may think of Edison, Franklin, or maybe Henry Ford. Would you ever think of yourself as someone who can create a quality product? Product creation is actually relatively easy and product launching is not that tough either! If you follow a few easy to understand steps, you could be starting the product creation and product launching process sooner than you think.

The first step in creating your information product is to know and understand your market. This can be very time-consuming, especially if you are unsure of what to do or where to look to know your market. Studying your niche market and understanding the buzz words and buying patterns can ease the process dramatically. Personally, I would recommend networking with someone who has had success in the niche market you are considering and learn from their results. If they are into product creation and not very business savvy expect some hesitation. If they only sell products and have nothing to do with product launching or product creation you may your first affiliate (sales person)! Something else you can use to find hot trends is with the Google Trends tool.

The second step is the product creation process. Take your niche market and brainstorm ideas and topics relating to it. There are a lot of product launching contests going on recently relating to a newly created internet marketing tool. There are so many aspects to the mentioned niche that literally, and unfortunately, anything can be considered an Internet Marketing tool. The reason that anyone can basically create an Internet Marketing tool is because of something called Private Label Rights products.

What I use private label rights products for, and highly recommend them in this specific manner, is to cure writer’s block especially when it is lingering. Many people base their entire product creation and product launching on a private label rights product. This is where you can start to shine and build a strong brand for yourself. If you set goals for yourself, short-term goals to be exact, you can see your product creation come into being much faster and there is a good chance with less revision needed. If you keep hitting time restraint road blocks; however there is nothing wrong with a slow and steady approach, you can consider outsourcing portions of your project. Outsourcing can be an extremely huge benefit or just as great of a disaster.

You can find someone to outsource work to at a freelance site such as Guru.com or eLance.com. When reviewing proposals it is almost mandatory you perform a background check on them as you are in essence hiring them. Doing a background check on freelancers is as easy as asking for samples of their work and reviewing feedback on the freelance site from previous customers. Depending on the size and requirements of your project this can add up to a decent sized investment, so caution is very important. One tip I always recommend to people looking to hire an individual is to ask them what they can provide you that no one else can. This simple question gives them a chance to “toot their own horn” and acknowledge where they feel most competent as far as their skill set.

The final portion of the product creation and product launching formula is the launch. This can literally make or break the effort, time, and maybe (if you invested) money you put in to your project. There are numerous aspects to product launching and although their relevance is debated in terms to their effect, experts agree all must be followed. The person in your field who you asked for product advice from can help you substantially if you have kept in touch. If not, the first thing you need to do is to create a visually appealing website with flawless design work.

I also mentioned outsourcing before, this is one aspect of product launching I have little strength in and I always outsource this portion. The website does not have to be large however the content (ad copy in Internet Marketing) must be stellar and as perfect as possible. This is where advertising knowledge or experience is beneficial. When the site is set up you now put a lead capture form on your website.

I put two lead capture pages on all products I create on the internet and is one of the best methods of getting a solid start when you are in the product launching stage. When you gain information from a prospect or someone looking to get paid for referring sales you are able to provide them updates or specials. Many people abuse their prospect or affiliate lists by in turn emailing them with a new product daily and I find the recommendations to be totally unrelated to their original need, problem, or interest.

Another stage in the product launching stage is creating a free report or demo version of your product to entice the product to sign up to your email list. Using proper follow up with this can help generate numerous sales for you. One thing you need to ensure is that your free product completely relates to your main product that you are looking to sell.

You are now ready to advertise your product launching to customers as well as the opportunity to sell for affiliates. This is the single aspect that many product creations and launches fail on. It is actually not entirely difficult. One thing you can do is write articles (and a good amount of them) on topics relating to your product. I am a huge advocate of giving a solution in forums. When you join a forum you are normally offered the opportunity to create a signature. In your signature, you should enter the link to your opt-in or lead capture page. When you respond to posts, you are advertising your opportunity.

It is not impossible to create a product and it does not have to take a long time. You need to setup a plan and stick to it. If you get stuck, look at similar and successful products to your own and try and see how they did it. When you sit down and brainstorm you will be surprised with what you can imagine.